Top of the Charts

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I have always been fascinated by lists, particularly Billboard magazines' Hot 100 chart.  I have been following the Top 10 pretty much every week since I was in grade school.  Over the decades, I have become so familiar with their various charting techniques, that I have frequently been able to determine the top songs of the year.  I havn't always been exact, but I come close very often.  Sometimes, I have been able to guess upsets that many people wouldn't even see coming.  Take this year.  One would think that "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi with Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber would be the number one song of the year.  I mean, it spent sixteen weeks at number one.  However, through my own analysis of the weekly top ten lists, I discovered that "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran had actually spent more total weeks in the top ten, even though it only spent twelve weeks at number one.  It would be a close call, but Ed wound up getting number one song of the year, just as I had predicted.  In fact, I correctly predicted the top three songs of the year in order, with "That's What I Like" by Bruno Mars coming in third.  Each of these songs had chart performances so dominating, that no other songs really came close.  In fact, any two of these songs spent more weeks in the top ten  then all songs by solo women combined.  I had felt that this was the case, but it took my research to conform it.  Anyway, it was an interesting year in the charts.  I hope you like my Christmas message at the top of the page.  It was going to include a snowman graphic, but I couldn't get things to work out just right.  Still, I think it came out pretty well.